Christophers Comment

Posted by Christopher on 1 May 2016 | 2 Comments

CHRISTOPHERS COMMENT MAY 2016

Seeing Janet has her Book Club ladies at our place tonight it seems an ideal time to retire to the Library/Office and pen this latest epistle.

Being the first of May we are in the throws of changing over our dairy heifers once again. This year we are down by a few mainly due to one of our clients buying a run-off and now grazing his heifers there. We thought we may have a struggle keeping our numbers due to the depressing milk price but so far so good.

It has been a peculiar year to date. We were promised a very dry summer (El Nino) so many farmers especially on the East coast heeded the warning of the forecasters and unloaded a lot of their stock earlier than they normally would. But just the opposite has happened and the East coast has received more than their share of rain. Consequently many farmers had to go back into the store market to buy in lambs to eat all the surplus feed which was good for those farmers who are forced to sell their lambs as stores.

We in the Waikato have had a very hot summer and the rain that has come has been very localised.

We have been OK but more rain at times would have been welcome. This is one of the first years that I can recall that we have had no thunderstorms here. Grass cover at the moment however is good leading into autumn/winter.

The lamb price started off with plenty of promise but soon fell away to unacceptable levels. We need at least $100 a lamb and we have been down as low as $75.00. What didn't help us was that the spring was cold and windy (typical El Nino) and lambs just don't like cold and wind when we are trying to fatten them. Consequently our first picks were not as good as they should have been.

Interestingly enough all the farming papers are page after page of the plight of the dairy farmer; very little is written about the plight of the drystock farmer!

One unfortunate consequence of the weather patterns this year was when the showers came and the temperatures were still high it lead to one of the worst facial eczema outbreaks for many years. Dairy farmers who had never seen FE were suddenly confronted by many animals having been exposed. For those of you unaware of what FE is, it is caused by a spore in the grass when under the right climatic conditions explodes in numbers and affects the liver of the animal causing it to become sensitive to light. The animal then seeks shade and its skin can peel off. Not very nice.

We have been breeding our sheep for the last nine years to become tolerant to FE and in spite of this some of our sheep were affected mainly because the numbers of spores were so high. Without this tolerance though we could have been decimated.

Away from the farm we have had a pretty good time. One of us turned 70 in November so as a celebration we flew all the NZ family to Warrnambool where James and his family live and had a memorable few days with them. James took time off work and the children took time off school; it

was lovely to see the reconnection between all the cousins, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters. Having all the family together (all sixteen of us) for the first time in a very long time meant the world to me; a week I will never forget and thank you everyone for helping to make it happen.

At home Janet and I together with Eric and Lynne Hill and Simon Makgill and Bill Cummings had three days canoeing down the Whanganui river – ninety one kilometers all up. This was a wonderful experience although one of us was very nervous after the lecture from the canoe company about all the things that can happen on the river; enough angry rapids to be interesting to say the least and no help for hours if required! The weather was perfect and the river magical. Some of the rapids were testing especially so on the first day for Janet and I and on the last day for Simon amd Bill. However the water was warm so it wasn't too bad. Tough on pride only! The first night in the John Coull DOC hut and the second in the Bridge to Nowhere Lodge. We did a side trip to the Bridge to Nowhere on the second day. The whole experience was one we won't forget. And of course it is classed as one of the nine Great Walks of New Zealand.

Then we had a week off (to recover?) and packed our backpacks for a 4 day 3 night walk around Lake Waikaremoana which for us is the last of the Great Walks; yes, we have done them all! But for me it was one of the best. I am proud to say we walked every inch of it carrying our packs with all our sleeping bags, gear, clothes, cooker and food for four days. The weather was good for 2 days and wet for the last 2 which is typical for this walk. Unfortunately the wet part coincided with when we were at the highest point at Panekiri Bluff where the views are (apparently) amazing. For us, mist and rain and no view. But the walk itself was one of the best. Changing forests and landscapes all the time, a lake to swim in to revive tired legs and two of the huts being run by Maori wardens who were so interesting and informative. This walk is a must if you are a tramper.

Our final trip of the summer was a birthday present road trip from my dear wife to me to retrace some of where my father worked when he first came to NZ. This entailed a trip around the East Cape to a farming station called Rewetu which is now part of a five station enterprise owned by a Swiss businessman. These stations are situated about 20 kms from Potaka which itself is about 20km west of Hicks Bay. We know from my father's notes that he was shepherding on this station for more than two years in the late 1920s. In fact a lot of his notes tie in with a book on the East Coast stations called “To Be A Pioneer”; from this book we were able to ascertain precisely when dad worked there as the book tells the story of how the then owner was killed by being thrown from his horse and died a few days later in hospital. This was in 1929. Dad's notes tell the same story as he was there and helped get King Reed (the owner) out. Block and paddock names, as per his notes also, are the same today as they were ninety years ago. We made contact with the present manager of these properties and ended up having a very pleasant afternoon with Barry and Susan which included a lovely lunch and a drive around some of the properties in the valley. A lot of the original infrastructure on Rewetu is no longer there. I believe the woolshed was washed away in a flood and the homestead may have met a similar fate. But the hills looked as steep as Dad described them. He said in his notes that 'they should never have been cleared of bush, but the word erosion hadn't been invented then'!

Finally birthday wishes to all those lucky people who are now a year older than when I posted the last comment. Mind you, some of us probably dont feel we are lucky that we are getting too much older; no choice I'm afraid.

CHRIS

28 April 2016